Questions linger about fair election after abductions

Posted: Saturday, June 24, 2000

RAVI NESSMANThe Associated Press

HARARE, Zimbabwe - As Zimbabwe braced for its most hotly contested election since independence, 14 opposition poll watchers were abducted and held for several hours Friday, raising further doubts about the fairness of a weekend vote that follows months of campaign violence.

President Robert Mugabe's party has ruled the country for two decades, and the strong challenge posed by the nascent Movement for Democratic Change has startled the country's entrenched leadership.

Human rights groups and some international observers have accused Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party of waging a campaign of intimidation against opponents to keep them from the parliamentary polls today and Sunday.

A recent opinion poll showed strong support for the opposition, but it will be difficult for the MDC to win an overall majority. Mugabe, whose term runs until 2002, is not on the ballot, but the election is seen as a referendum on his autocratic rule and the shrinking economy.

Pierre Schori, leader of the 173-person European Union observer mission, said pre-election violence raised concerns about how many of Zimbabwe's 5.1 million voters would show up at the polls.

"When I talk to my observers, with their experience, they have not been used to this amount of violence in previous elections they have observed," Schori said.

More than 30 people, mostly opposition supporters, have been killed in political violence since February, after Mugabe's party suffered its first electoral loss with the defeat of a constitutional referendum it backed.

On Friday, suspected ruling party militants detained and questioned 14 poll watchers in western Zimbabwe, eventually freeing all but one, said David Coltart, a local MDC candidate. The remaining poll watcher's whereabouts were unknown, he said.

Throughout the campaign, Mugabe has vilified the MDC as a puppet of the country's tiny, but economically powerful, white minority who he says would return the country to British colonial rule.